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Almost a year after the new coronavirus pandemic, an independent team from the World Health Organization (WHO) found that, despite years of warnings, the epidemic still highlighted the slowness and disability of governments and health organizations. public health in various countries. It was a “collective failure.” “.
This independent think tank led by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is still investigating, but in a draft interim report, present the scale of this investigation to the outside world. and clearly show that the entire world needs to rethink its own epidemic prevention practices.
Clark was the Administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Johnson Surleaf was the first female president-elect of an African country. In 2011, he won the Nobel Peace Prize with the other two.
The New York Times noted that this interim report can be described as an initial blueprint for country reforms. The report details many false assumptions, ineffective plans, and a slow response during the pandemic, including mistakes made by the WHO itself. He was complicit in this epidemic that killed more than 2 million people.
WHO: World governments have repeatedly failed in this epidemic
The report of the “Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response” states: “Our collective ability to come together to create a safety net for humans has completely failed in this epidemic.”
The report describes the repeated misconduct around the world in this epidemic, from the “slow, cumbersome and indecisive” pandemic alert system to the contingency plan that has not been prepared over the years, to the fact that that countries do their own thing and even hinder the response. Public health officials are in a hurry, too, with the research team saying they couldn’t understand why the WHO committee had to wait until January 30, 2020 to declare the epidemic an international health emergency; The New Times accused the Chinese government of pressuring countries not to make similar announcements.
However, the report believes that the WHO’s clumsy hands are not an excuse for the leaders of various countries to continue failing to prevent the epidemic, because even if health officials have given clear warnings, “many countries are looked down upon. “. The report also accused public health leaders of being too slow to respond to early evidence that asymptomatic infections also spread the virus.
This group of independent experts was originally appointed by WHO Secretary General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to review the global response to the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19, Wuhan pneumonia). The independent team claimed that the investigation report was based on hundreds of files, expert consultations and interviews with more than 100 front-line first responders. It is unclear whether the researchers have interviewed key WHO officials or reviewed internal documents.
The report noted that China has genetic sequence evidence showing that a new type of coronavirus spread in Wuhan in December 2019. Local health officials could have done something more quickly and decisively to contain the outbreak, but they missed the opportunity, and then one country after another continued. Repeat the same mistakes.
Not only are countries failing to support scientifically proven health response measures, governments and the private sector are also falling apart. Wearing masks and maintaining social distancing have become political issues. Various conspiracy theories have been widely disseminated. Many countries cannot even conduct routine examinations and track contact history for epidemic prevention and control.
The travel ban is likely to help curb the infection
The researchers found that leaders in various countries often focused too much on economic recovery when making health and epidemic prevention decisions, which turned out to be a failed decision. In fact, countries that can respond vigorously and effectively to the epidemic first have a better economic recovery. People should not lose sight of the evidence that they are big because they are small.
Although the report did not name specific countries, it is undoubtedly berating countries like the United States; The United States insists on trade and does not want to block cities under the Trump administration. Trump declared in March of last year that preventing the epidemic cannot be more problematic than the epidemic itself. At that time, there were only 30,000 confirmed cases in the United States. Today, there are not only more than 23 million confirmed cases, and nearly 400,000 deaths from the disease are among the highest in the world. crown.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also forced public health officials to rethink some assumptions. For example, a travel ban has long been seen as doing more harm than good, for fear of delaying medical care and unfairly punishing countries. The research team said the travel ban “will probably help curb the infection.”
This tentative report notes that the draft finalized after the investigation will address the more systemic challenges facing WHO; the current functioning of the WHO is determined by consensus among countries and the regulations promulgated by the WHO are not mandatory. The report noted that, at present, there are still deep disagreements about the role that WHO should play and how much funding it should accept.
Looking ahead, the report also mentioned the damage of injustice to global vaccination. To highlight the imbalance, the report has a chart showing the estimated vaccination schedules for various countries. Rich countries like the United States are expected to complete universal vaccination before the end of this year, but poor countries will not even be able to vaccinate the most vulnerable groups. It can be until 2023. The national vaccination can be completed before the end of the year.
（首 圖 來源 ： This file is not in the public domain. Therefore, you are requested to use the following alongside the image if you reuse this file: © Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons）
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